Pages

Friday, 18 October 2013

Shauna's Team Spirit placement

We recommend all our Event Management students undertake a work placement to help their future career prospects.

Shauna Greensmith toook time out from the final year of her studies to tell us about her placement with Team Spirit.

What have you gained from your placement with Team Spirit?

"The major benefit was it gave me real life experience of working within an Event Management company and I couldn't have got a better placement more suited to my degree at UCLan. It allowed me to experience all areas of running an event - planning, execution and post event. It also gave me great insight into an area of the industry I knew very little about prior to my placement."

What were the highlights of your time at Team Spirit?

"Celebrating the company's 20th birthday with an amazing group of people and experiencing a Team Spirit event from the delegate’s perspective."

What was the most interesting event you did?

"A team building event for the Acorn Awards. This is an awards ceremony held by Caterer and Hotelkeeper Magazine that recognises the top 30 under 30 within the hospitality industry. The event was a Moviedrome event and I was assigned a group to guide and help produce a two minute advert on the theme of superheroes. The sight of seeing adults dressed as superheroes running around a five-star castle in Devon was an experience I'll never forget!"

How has what you covered on your degree helped you? How will it help you for your 3rd year studies?

"The modules I studied in the first two years helped create a foundation for my placement year. When carrying out my placement, areas of my studies become clearer and easier to understand as I was physically doing the work and could see the processes rather than just trying to imagine them.

"The experience I gained is already benefitting me in my studies. Scenarios we are being asked to think about in modules, such as strategic management, I can relate to my experiences at Team Spirit and understand what is being asked. I believe I would have found this a lot more difficult if I hadn't done a placement."

What did you learn on your placement?

The biggest lesson was I can now critically evaluate myself and identify my own personal areas for improvement and plan to work on these and continue to grow and develop as a person and an Event Manager."

Would you recommend a placement year and why?

"Yes, I don't think you truly appreciate how much experience you gain until you do it. There's a massive difference between thinking you understand something, working in hypothetical situations and fixing pretend problems, to actually doing a job role and being faced with situations and problems in the real world and having to fix them.

What advice would you give to new students?

"Gain as much work experience within your chosen degree industry from the start. This is extremely important in the Events Industry. Anyone can read up on how to become an Event Manager, but it’s the experience you gain that makes you one and even though three years seems like a long time it isn't.

You'll soon get to third year and realise you have very little work experience. All those missed opportunities you put off because 'you'll do the next one' will be in the past and you'll be sat thinking I wish I'd helped with the Fresher's Fair or that volunteer project for the SU.

"All the little one day event opportunities will soon add up and will provide you with valuable experience and set you apart from your classmates when you graduate. These are especially important to take advantage of if you don't plan on doing a placement year."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Welcome

Hi everyone and welcome to the UCLan Event Management blog. We use this blog to keep you up to date on our first, second, placement and final year students. Through this blog we showcase all the amazing work our students participate in. For further details about our courses please contact: Rod Train